elizabeth Blackwell
Elizabeth Blackwell's Legacy: Advancements in Medicine and Women's RightsElizabeth Blackwell has contributed greatly to American society by expanding women's rights through her courage and determination to become the first woman doctor in America. In the mid and late 1800s, there weren't many choices for women in the professions. Women mostly became housewives or worked in factories, and they only dreamed of becoming doctors, but Elizabeth Blackwell changed it all. Blackwell was accepted to Geneva College in New York because the medical students there had thought her application was a joke from a rival school. However, she soon gained her peers' respect by her competence and hard work. After she graduated, she wanted it to make it possible for others to become doctors as she had. As a result, Elizabeth Blackwell used her writings to support her ideas that women are equal if not superior to men, and that they should be allowed to practice medicine.Blackwell used both religious and historical allusions in one of her books, The Laws of Life with Special Reference to the Physical Education of Girls, to illustrate how women are equal to men. In the Greek Myth, Athena is the goddess of agriculture and wisdom. Blackwell argues
Doctors usually become who they are in order to help others, and if they deny other people, even women, the chance to help save lives, then they are denying who they are. Blackwell agreed that women are beneficial in the world of medicine since women generally end up in the some situations and/or have the same problems; female patients could then reveal certain personal troubles without any embarrassment. In the Spartan society, women demonstrated that if given the chance, they could do most things as well as the men. God speed her, then, in her errand of mercy, and crown her efforts with abundant success!" (Luft 7-8). On the other hand, in the Spartan society, women worked, lived and were educated right alongside the men. Elizabeth Blackwell further proves that women are equal to men through the Christian Creation Story of Adam and Eve. Blackwell's determination to become a doctor was fueled by other's declaration that it was impossible for women to measure up to men, and that women are inferior to men. After her school acquaintances, the Quakers were the first group to accept her as a woman doctor. Blackwell also wrote a book called, Curious Herbals. "Writing for advice to six different physicians in different parts of the country, their invariable reply was, that the object, though desirable, was impracticable; "utterly utopian for a woman to obtain a medical education". The Spartan legislator who required these things had two reasons for doing this. Elizabeth Blackwell was discouraged in every way during her journey to becoming a physician, but there were some who encouraged her and still others who accepted her after she displayed her true potential. "I do not wish to give [women] a first place, still less a second one - but the most complete freedom, to take their true place whatever it may be," said Elizabeth Blackwell in response to Lady Noel Bryon's suggestion that women doctors should assume a secondary position in the medical profession (Ruth 1). Her book, Medicine and Morality, illustrates her concept that, unlike men, women incorporate morality into medicine.
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